“I hope you will enjoy it,” he said, “as it is to be the last.”
“Surely,” says I, “you cannot have the folly to be resolute in this? Would you yield your life up for a whim? Doth not your very soul turn dark at the thought of death—and such a death?”
I shivered as I spoke, and the lad turned paler.
“No,” says he, “that is—at least,” he dropped his tone, “I do not think about it.”
“You will have to do,” I answered, with the slow unction of a priest. “And you so full of lusty youth. Do I not see health sparkling in your eyes? The world must be lovely to you, I am certain. Your heart is fed on sunshine, and the singing of the birds is the only sound you hear. And are there no ambitions in you? Have you never dreamt of glory?”
He turned still paler at this speech, and a sort of grim joy took hold of me when I saw how my unaccustomed gravity was sinking in his mind.
“But you?” he said.
“I am not to be regarded. I have less to lose than you. Life itself in your case; in mine only a new story for the town.”
“Do you forget that they can attaint you of high treason?” he replied. “And that would mean a long imprisonment, and you would find it a tedious and very weary thing. I know, for I have tried it.”
“High treason—imprisonment!” says I; “these are bogies for a child. Politics are wonderful affairs, but if they can clap Bab Gossiter in the ‘Jug’ and diet her on bad bread and dirty water, let ’em do it, boy, by every means, and I’ll admire ’em for it.”